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Craig Witt is the Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at MotionPoint, a company that solves the operational complexity and cost of website localization. He has 28 years’ experience in building, leading and scaling high performing Go-To-Market teams at global enterprises.

International e-commerce is on the rise and businesses are expanding into new global markets online at a rapid pace. In an ideal world, they would translate every section, page and product description on their website for international customers. But budget constraints can limit their project scope—especially in its earliest days. This forces them to choose which sections of their site will be translated, and which won’t. This byline would share tips to help marketers make those challenging decisions.

THE MODERN CONTENT MARKETER’S BUYER GUIDE

Welcome to the 2019 edition of The Modern Content Marketer’s Buyer Guide. About 10 years ago, marketers realized that content is a critical piece of their pie, and have since been working overtime to generate content to help win the prospect’s attention.

But an audience that large means that businesses across the globe are vying for their digital attention, and to do so, they’re taking their content reach international to serve customers all over the world. Smart businesses know that translating their website for these international customers is important, but it can be a daunting proposition.

With marketing budgets crunched and teams as lean as they’ve ever been, how can companies tackle website translation while staying within budget and achieving the quality that savvy digital customers have come to expect from global brands?

Here are three things to contemplate as you tackle scaling your website to markets around the world.

Being Found: Discoverability

For most marketers, the first hurdle in bringing their brand to global markets is making sure new, local customers know it exists.

Established brands might enjoy some awareness in their flagship markets, but need to break new ground in their target expansion regions to help local customers find their site.

It’s relatively easy to find someone – or something, in the case of a CMS cartridge or connector – to translate fundamental text content on the site. But companies should consider the importance of international SEO in addition to simply translating visible website text. By translating a website’s metadata to optimize SEO, brands can ensure that their content is picked up by local, regional and global search engines.

Brand integrity is also an important consideration. Companies considering website translation have likely invested significant resources in establishing brand messaging and positioning that distinguishes them from others in the space. Proper translation includes working within brand guidelines to ensure that every piece of translated content looks, feels and sounds like it’s part of the flagship brand, no matter the language.

As a brand establishes trust and credibility in new markets, starting with key objectives – discoverability and brand awareness – can help guide translation investments and efforts from the start.

Standing Out: Customer Experience

Once new global audiences can find a company on the web, they will come to the site with the same expectations and standards of customers in flagship markets. They’re expecting valuable, useful content that’s easy to find, easy to navigate, and customized for them.

It’s table stakes today to be able to greet new global visitors in the language they prefer, or to give them a quick and easy option to select their preferred language for navigating site content. One of the best ways to engage customers from the start is by personalizing and customizing the content that’s served to them based on their location and language. Companies should work with someone knowledgeable about the local culture so they can take advantage of opportunities to offer seasonal content, promotions that coincide with local holidays or celebrations (or avoid those that wouldn’t be culturally prudent), and display product and service offerings that are only available in select regions.

In a multimedia world, it is also important that companies provide translated images, video captions, downloadable content, and content that’s served in third-party applications to ensure that customers never experience that clumsy, mixed-language experience that’s often the case on poorly translated global sites.

Savvy companies will be sure to capture the content they translate in a translation memory database so that they can leverage it elsewhere on their site, or in omnichannel campaigns across email or social media to avoid repeat translation efforts and costs. Updating international sites in real time is also important in order to maximize brand consistency, and modern translation systems can automatically detect and translate new content that shows up on a company’s site so their localized sites are always in lockstep with their flagship.

Staying Nimble: Leveraging Technology

Traditional translation approaches have tended to fall into one of two camps: the labor-intensive and slow human translation approach, or the cost-effective and faster machine translation process that leverages technology to do the work.

But for today’s businesses who are trying to balance their resources against complex website translation projects, neither approach is ideal.

A hybrid approach to website translation can offer higher-touch human translation when appropriate and more efficient machine translation when it makes sense.

For example, site content that’s frequently repeated, standardized, or transactional might benefit from machine translation to process large volumes of similar content quickly and inexpensively. But for a business taking its brand into new global markets, having expert quality control of its content is essential for brand integrity and accuracy, as well as sensitivity to local cultural nuance or language variations. And some cornerstone content – think large marketing assets or significant press – might require the deft hand of a linguist who is versed in not only the language but the customs and preferences of a local market to get the voice, tone, and personality of the brand just right.

A balance of both human and machine translation can ensure that a company’s project takes advantage of the strengths of both approaches to maximize the team’s resources and budget.

Website Translation for a Hyperconnected World

Moving fast isn’t a luxury in a digital world, it’s essential. And your website translation project doesn’t have to be bogged down in outdated approaches that tax your budget while overextending your in-house teams.

By keeping in mind a few key considerations from the start, you can make sure that bringing your website to international audiences is cost-effective and finely tuned to the speed of the global market so your business can grow, scale, and thrive.

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